Among the widely available services for streaming music, Soundcloud is near the top in popularity. One of Soundcloud’s key differences from the likes of Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music is that users are not charged for streaming any music that’s found on the service. Notably enough, it also allows for anyone to upload any music, whether it’s owned by the user that’s uploading or not, to the service. It’s for that reason that the likes of Universal Music Group is stepping in to create a deal between Soundcloud and the label that would introduce a subscription base setup that would in turn allow for users to stream music from artists, as users would now be paying to do so.
More importantly, this gets rid of another loophole for people who find themselves not wanting to pay for music and want to listen to it for free via services like Soundcloud. Unless a free version is somehow implemented, people may have to simply find the best subscription outlet for them. For now, there’s no word if Soundcloud will get rid of freely allowing people to upload their music. Inevitably, more details regarding this partnership are soon to come. You can read more about the partnership, here.
